Could Chelsea Sell Fernando Torres For £20m?

The Daily Mail is reporting this morning that Chelsea are willing to take as £30m loss on misfiring striker Fernando Torres.

According to Neil Ashton at the Daily Mail, Chelsea have considered sending Torres out on loan to rebuild his confidence, after scoring only three Premier League goals for Chelsea this year.

Chelsea had hoped that the signing Juan Mata this summer would improve Torres’s game, but after some good initial signs at the start of the season, he has been really poor since returning from his suspension.

Chelsea face two challenges with unloading Torres. One is the lack of strikers that Chelsea will have in the new year. With Anelka off to China, Drogba and Kalou going to the African Cup, Chelsea are left with Sturridge, Lukaku and Torres as their only recognized strikers for about six weeks in the new year. That is not much depth, and would seem to indicate that Chelsea would not sell Torres unless they had someone lined in to come in and replace him.

The second challenge that Chelsea faces is someone who is willing to pay £20m For Torres and then pay him wages of £150,000-a-week. There are only a handful teams in the world we can afford those types of wages. One such club is Malaga in La Liga. Malaga was bought by Qatari investor, Abdullah bin Nasser bin Abdullah Al Ahmed Al Thani last year and they are trying to turn themselves into the Manchester City of Spain.